Word: reefs
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Unfortunately, that's exactly what appears to be happening around the world. According to a comprehensive survey by the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) published Thursday in Science, one-third of the more than 700 species of reef-building corals are threatened with extinction. Compare that to a decade ago, when only 2% of corals were endangered. Using criteria established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature - a group that publishes an annual Red List of threatened animals - that makes corals the most endangered species on the Earth. The assessment's results, presented at the annual International Coral...
...come back to one culprit: us. Overfishing - especially the kind that uses dynamite or poison to kill whole schools of fish - destroys the coral directly, while polluted runoff from agriculture simply chokes them. Development in booming coastal economies from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia further threaten the delicate reefs. Tourism - in the form of diving and snorkeling - can also cause damage. As with so many other endangered species around the world, there doesn't seem to be enough space for healthy coral reefs and unchecked human development. "It's just a litany of bad actions," says Brian Huse, the executive...
...deserves real credit. With a stroke of a pen in 2006, President George W. Bush created the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a 140,000 sq. mi. protected area northwest of Hawaii. Larger than every other national park in the U.S. combined, the monument protects 10% of the shallow coral reef habitat in U.S. territory. These kind of reserves need to be expanded, to limit the influence of human activity on delicate corals...
...paradise. Tanned, blonde wahines - that's lady surfers, if you aren't up on the argot - navigate waist-high waves. The area is also a magnet for pro surfers, but they eschew the small stuff and charter boats out to the nearby southern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef, where perfect, empty barrels unload onto jagged coral. When it's flat, there's good fishing and diving...
...over-water bungalows designed to reflect the architecture of a nearby fishing village. The Hunters paid relocation costs for the 15 or so families living on the islands. They hauled away tons of trash that had been piling up for years, and started to revive the local coral reef that had been all but destroyed by overfishing. "Knowing that there had been all these other issues about how people had been relocated, we wanted to do it properly from the start," says Rory Hunter. "We're going to be doing business here for a long time." Maybe money will...